


One Letter At A Time

by sherlockpond



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Tower, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Character Death Fix, Finding Lost Loves, Love across the decades, M/M, Mentions of Ultron, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Resurrection, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, They're wearing me down, This is sickly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-05 00:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3098876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlockpond/pseuds/sherlockpond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the prompt found here:</p><p>http://bonjourentrez.tumblr.com/post/106822768982/some-twitter-ramblings-on-the-topic-of-soulmate</p><p>"I keep thinking about those kind of soul mark things and like. What if they changed sometimes. Things change, right? So it's the 'first words spoken' variety and Steve has Bucky's first words to him, god knows what they are but it's fine, they're happy except then Bucky falls from the train, then Steve goes under the ice, and when Steve wakes up in the future, he finds the mark has changed. Now it says 'Who the hell is Bucky?' and he spends at least a year thoroughly insulted by his potential future partner."</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Letter At A Time

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I'm back! Hope you all had a reasonable Christmas and New Year (it can be a tough time).
> 
> Enjoy!

Following the days from Bucky’s death, Steve barely sleeps or eats. He catches his shoulder blade in the reflection of a mirror whilst dressing and sees the once black soul mark turning grey on his shoulder, the colour draining like Steve had seen his mother’s own mark. Eventually it would turn white and scar, a constant reminder of what had happened, another thing Steve didn’t want to keep seeing. To keep blaming himself on.

 

But he doesn’t get to see it fade and scar, because he’s a stupid punk and decides to fly a plane into the ocean in order to save a nation – naturally.

 

When he wakes he doesn’t really think about it, he works out but he doesn’t look in mirrors if he can help it. A few months he’s asleep at his modest flat in Brooklyn when he feels heat just below chest, on the right of his abdomen. It feels white hot and it’s like muscle memory because he knows exactly what that feeling is even though he’s only felt it once, decades ago.

 

Running to a draw, Steve pulls out a mirror and lifts up his shirt, wincing at the reflection of his own body but soon distracted by the words raising from his skin like neat scratches.

 

_‘Who the hell is Bucky?’_

 

Steve frowns and puts the mirror roughly on the cabinet, which he pulled it from before padding back to bed and sitting against the headrest. How could someone say that to him? Why would Bucky come up in conversation to begin with? Steve is irritated to say the least. He falls asleep with the duvet pulled up to his shoulder, still sitting up.

 

He regrets falling asleep in that position in the morning.

 

2010 finishes and Christmas doesn’t feel right. Everything is artificial and there’s nothing to do with the spirit of Christmas anymore. Kids want the latest technological dummies and Steve notices that when he walks around Central Park and the smaller parks around the city; that kids seem to be looking down more than up, enjoying the scenery and sometimes, if it’s late, the stars.

 

2011 starts quite bland, Steve starts to get to grips with all of the new things that are being thrown at him. He gets his physical analysis from S.H.I.E.L.D, they put his through his paces and Steve enjoys the challenge of it all, but he still can feel the words on his lower ribcage, the meaning of them unanswered.

 

Shit hits the fan in 2012, Steve makes his appearance as Captain in nearly seven decades, the Chitauri are defeated and Loki is sent back to where he came from. Steve starts to think that the riddle written on his skin is never going to be fulfilled. But then, after starting to look in mirrors more often, re-learning to love himself as oppose to loathe, he notices that the lettering occasionally goes grey and nearly translucent to his skin colour; sometimes the letters are indistinguishable and near death-white. Steve can hardly imagine what’s going on with the person on the other end of the words. But he’s swept into public speeches, promises that it’ll be “the last one”. It never is. It’s not the embarrassing holding babies and shaking middle-aged white guys hands, but it gets fairly close. By the end of the year, Steve’s bored; even though he’s made some good friends in Natasha, Clint, Thor and Bruce (even Tony, although he’ll never openly admit it to the egotistical bastard) it still doesn’t explain his marks.

 

By 2013 he learns that talking about soul marks is socially more acceptable, so he asks Natasha about his, in which he also learns a little about hers. It’s written on the inside of her wrist

 

_‘Back in a sex’_

 

Steve laughs and Nat lets out a rare giggle, it’s one of the reasons she wears gloves during missions, because areas around soul marks tend to be a lot more painful when hurt because they’re a link, and therefore a soft-spot, to another person. She hasn’t got the answers he needs, but Steve doesn’t mind all that much, he’s just glad that he’s found someone that he can talk to.

 

Christmas is better; Stark, Bruce, Thor, Barton, Nat, Pepper and Steve sit in Avengers Tower (even Fury pops in to the festivities during the evening), toast Coulson and eat well, each one poking their food baby afterwards, having been wowed by Pepper’s cooking. They drink and laugh, but Steve often catches himself watching the flames in the fireplace, remembering the way the marking has burnt their way onto his skin. Nat notices and pokes his shoulder to catch his attention back into the present, he smiles gratefully and joins in the conversation.

 

2014 is when the world comes crashing around Steve’s ears. S.H.I.E.L.D isn’t what he thought it was, Pierce is a rat and none of the other Avengers bar Nat and him are able to help. Sam Wilson is like a angel sent from the gods, he keeps Steve on his toes and is so easy to talk to that Steve could almost cry with relief at the miracle of finding someone so similar to himself.

 

But Bucky’s alive.

 

 

And Steve falls to his knees in the shock, his brain’s working at 300mph and all the theories he comes up with are preposterous, but one has to be true. Nat keeps him relatively level-headed, Sam helps by setting him on the right track.

 

The battle is fought, HYDRA goes down in a blaze of fire thanks to the whole team but Bucky manages to get away. But he saved Steve from drowning, so he must remember something.

 

The rest of the year is about finding Bucky alive, it’s Steve’s mission to find him and take him home, safe and well.

 

In the end, Steve realises how dumb he’s been. Of course Bucky would have been one step ahead of them. He finds the prick at his own flat munching on some Twinkies with a shit-eating grin on his face, his muddy boots perched on the armrest of the sofa.

 

Steve grins and lets out a bitter but amused sigh of laughter “You’re a dick,”

 

Bucky beams back at him “Wouldn’t have it any other way, would ya?”

 

Steve strides over to him, Bucky stands up and they hug for longer than a hug should last, but they don’t give a fuck, Steve’s just so fucking happy he’s home.

 

Over 2015 they have ups and downs, they re-learn each others habits and preferences, they learn to hold hands in public without feeling fear. Steve finds out where Bucky’s soul marks are and what they say.

 

‘Bucky’

 

Is white and scarred, but it slowly gains it’s colour back, but there’s another mark. They guess it’s because Bucky had his memory wiped and his body compensated.

 

Instead, on Bucky’s right shoulder, neatly inscribed in jet black soul mark is:

 

‘People are going to die, Buck. I can’t let that happen.’

 

It’s not the most romantic line in the book, but it pretty much sums up their relationship.

 

_Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it, please have a look at my tumblr!
> 
> sherlockpond.tumblr.com


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